The Timeless Way of building

• The Timeless Way of building is a book written by Christopher Alexander. It defines a pattern based way of building architecture which has been highly influential in software design (See Technology)
• There is a 'quality without a name'.
  • It cannot be put exactly into words, but is something close to egoless / comfortable / whole / alive. Much of life is a struggle to become closer to that quality. Great architecture helps us become closer to that quality, by having some of it in it.
  • A place has that quality when it is alive.
  • Aliveness comes from the events that happen there every day. The events in a space have a symbiotic relationship with the architecture of the space. They shape each other.
  • A place is alive when it's been built by the community that use the place.
  • The quality without a name is emergent. It cannot be created, only encouraged by the architecture and the people in it.
• To enable communities to build, we must equip them with a pattern language
  • patterns can either be alive or dead
  • each pattern is a rule of thumb which describes what must be done to generate the event which it defines
  • Each pattern has principle components which define it
  • you must be able to draw a pattern. This is because the language is spacial rather than verbal.
• The patterns must then be put together into a structured language
  • Patterns are not isolated, and they do not live in a flat heirarchy
  • The network of patterns creates the language. It anchors each pattern and helps to make it complete.
  • The quality without a name emerges more from the compounding combination of patterns than any individual pattern
  • The language must be made before starting design, as it's the structure and content of the language which make the design.
• In summary, to create somewhere that has the quality without a name:
  • Observe the events
  • List patterns which relate to these events
  • Combine the patterns in your mind
  • A pattern works when it deals with all forces that are present
  • The only way to know if it works is to see how it makes you feel
  • Finally, the timeless way of building is 'timeless' because it's the way we intuitively build as humans, and have done for years. It merely enables us to unlock that intuition.
• What does a pattern language look like in VR?

Last update: 2022-02-26 22:24